9781644135945

The Time After Pentecost
And where are the nine?” (Gospel.) This reproachful question is addressed to us ungrateful
Christians who follow worldly pleasures. Blessed are they who know how to be grateful and
appreciate the privilege of being Christians. “Thou hast given us, O Lord, bread from heaven”
(Communion). How grateful we should be for our baptism and for being privileged to participate
in the Sacrifice of the Mass!
Meditation
The liturgy of this Sunday again calls to our attention the relationship between the Old Covenant
and the New. It presents the old problem of whether Christ and His Church alone shall be
the foundation of our eternal salvation, or whether besides Him and His Church, the law
of Moses, the Old Testament, shall be necessary and binding. The answer of the liturgy is
unmistakable and clear: Christ and Christ alone is the source of our salvation. “Neither is
there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby
we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
“To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed” (Epistle). “Go forth out of thy country
and from thy kindred and out of thy father’s house, and come into the land which I shall
show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee. . . . In thee shall all the
kindred of the earth be blessed” (Gn 12:1 ff.). Abraham had to wait many years before a son
was born to him, Isaac, the son of promise. Now he is commanded by God to sacrifice this son
of promise, his only child, by his own hand. Yet Abraham obeys. When he lifts the sword to
sacrifice his son, the Lord orders him to cease, and instead of Isaac he sacrifices a ram provided
by God. Now the Lord repeats His promises to Abraham: “Because thou hast done this thing
and hast not spared thy only-begotten son for My sake, I will bless thee. . . . And in thy seed
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed My voice” (Gn 22:16
ff.). God does not say, as St. Paul stresses in today’s Epistle, “To his seeds, as of many; but as
of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ,” in whom alone all the nations of the earth shall be
blessed and shall have salvation from the Lord: “That the blessing of Abraham might come
on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus; that we may receive the promise of the spirit by faith”
(Gal 3:14). “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall
be condemned” (Mk 16:16).
“At that time, as Jesus was going to Jerusalem, . . . as He entered into a certain town,
there met Him ten lepers,” who cried to Him for help and healing. He commanded them:
“Go, show yourselves to the priests” (Gospel). They obey, and while they go they are
made clean. The law of Moses, the Old Covenant with its priesthood and sacrifices, is
unable to heal those poor people from their leprosy. Through Christ alone can a sinful
world receive salvation; for in Him alone all the nations of the earth are blessed. Only one
of the ten lepers who were cured returned to the Lord. Praising God with a loud voice, he
ascribes his healing to God, to Jesus, acknowledging thereby that Jesus is the Savior and
that salvation cannot be found in men’s own works or in the fulfillment of the law of the
Old Testament. Forsaking the Old Testament, he becomes a child of the Church, having
been called from among the pagans and sinners “by the faith of Jesus Christ” (Epistle).
The Church believes and teaches that there is no salvation but in Christ alone. “There
is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
551